Seasons

The rough seas draw in

as clouds gather in darkness

with snow in the air

Over the lush hills

laughter and joy fill the air-

the ripe fruits of summer

B.Pascal Zwane

A Leap of Faith

This day had the makings of a normal Friday afternoon, but as I walked toward this great white building, I was reminded that I was headed towards my new life. My eyes, for as long as I can remember, were fixed on the minaret; which towered over the building like it was safeguarding it. It is where the long and mystical sound came from. The echo of the call made it sound as though there were two voices coming from it – a melodious cacophony, one may say. As I walked nearer to the call, it grew in loudness, and the words being sung were more definite. With the call done, I came back down to earth and turned my focus to my immediate surroundings. The distinct sound of laughter from children playing in the courtyard was dominant over everything else now. It was accompanied by the murmur of many men, most of whom were warmly greeting each other. They were all heading towards the entrance. So was I. I knew there was no turning back from here on.    

                 

The entrance was scattered with shoes which seemed to have been taken off in a rush. The small flight of steps that followed the shoe area, however, was clean. The steps were covered with a thick Persian carpet and they led to a lobby which had some worshipers wondering about. On the left was a shut door. I knew I had to go inside this door as it was the only place where I would probably find the imam. I was greeted with a pleasant smile after walking in. He was expecting me. The leather chair which I set on was rigid and dark brown. Its stiff texture and piercing plastic-like smell suggested that it was still relatively new. Everything was still.

               

The imam led me through to the prayer hall which was covered entirely by the same lush carpet. I was immediately captured by the  detailed decoration and calligraphy which was spread across the walls and dome above me. The dome was finely painted with floral and other symmetrical patterns – all in the shade of blue and brown. The calligraphy was bold and beautifully complex. It could be seen high on the walls around the room. The walls themselves had multiple small blocks of tiles decorated with arabesque floral patterns. The chandelier, at the center of the room, was the main attraction. It was cone-shaped with rows of light bulbs that shone through crystal decorations. The chandelier sparkled, but not as much as to disturb the people in the room. As I marveled, the imam grabbed my hand as if to remind me why I was I there.

               

Finally, in unison, the congregation in the mosque started organizing themselves into rows – all evenly spaced out. Everyone stood shoulder to shoulder except for some elderly men who set on chairs on the sides of each row. I, standing shoulder to shoulder with everyone else, followed the lead of the imam. I was somewhere in the center of the room, flanked by men who were in deep concentration. Nervous and doubtful of my every move, I proceeded to complete my first salat as a Muslim.

B.Pascal Zwane

The Architect’s Apprentice by Elif Shafak, book review: Istanbul stars in its own story

When an author beautifully evokes a sense of place in a novel, it’s something of a cliché to describe that setting as almost a character in its own right.

But there really is no other way to talk about Istanbul in this sumptuous piece of historical fiction from the famous Turkish writer Elif Shafak, the plot and characters being so carefully and intricately intertwined with the very existence of the city that shapes them.

It is the 16th century and Istanbul is the centre of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan holding sway over everyone from the grandest of lords to the lowliest of beggars. Into this maelstrom and chaos comes Jahan, a naive Indian boy who brings the exotic gift of a white elephant to the Sultan’s menagerie.

Jahan becomes the elephant’s mahout or tamer, and the animal quickly curries favour in the Sultan’s court, being used for everything from street entertainment to battles. At the same time, Jahan becomes apprenticed to Sinan, the real-life chief royal architect, and begins to learn the secrets of building design and construction.

Sinan’s life was extraordinary, spanning the rule of three sultans, responsible for hundreds of buildings and for shaping the face of Istanbul even to this day, and he was considered on a par with Michelangelo in the West.

Jahan slowly rises up through the ranks, and his presence in the royal court brings him into contact with the beautiful, caring and smart Princess Mihrimah, providing a sadly unfulfilled romance that traces a melancholic path through most of The Architect’s Apprentice.

There are various other plot strands of courtly intrigue, treachery and even murder weaving through the book and driving things along, although there are moments when things happen a little too coincidentally and conveniently to be credible.

But throughout it all the city is the real star, the teeming bustle of the streets, the whorehouses and palaces, the markets and mosques, the dungeons and bridges. And as the narrative progresses, the work of Sinan, Jahan, and Chota the elephant begins to take on greater meaning, the constant construction and destruction, the endless reinvention and renewal, acting as powerful metaphors. At one point Jahan realises that the secret of his master’s success lies not in toughness or indestructibility, “but in his ability to adapt to change and calamity, and to rebuild himself, again and again, out of the ruins”. It’s this kind of depth and breadth of scope that makes The Architect’s Apprentice an absorbing and moving piece of work.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-architects-apprentice-by-elif-shafak-book-review-istanbul-stars-in-its-own-story-9891743.html

Yalnızlık Nedir?

yalnızlık nedir ?

etrafında kimsen olmaması mı

yoksa aklında düşünecek kimsenin olmaması

öldüğünde arkandan üzülecek insanların olmaması mıdır yalnızlık

yoksa uzattığımda boş kalan ellerim mi

rüyalarında bile istediğin kişiyi görememek

ya da ölürken seni düşündüğümde

adını bile hatırlayamıyor olmam yalnızlık mıdır

her geçen kızı sana benzetip

benzemez kimse sana şarkılarını armağan etmek mi yoksa

ömür boyu mu yalnızlık gerçekten ?

yani bu ömürde Rab'den uzak olduğumuz her an

yalnız mıyız aslında ?

Kordondaki deniz kokusu mu yalnızlık ?

Gözyaşıyla denize atılan şişeler mi yoksa?

Seni seviyorum dediğim andaki sessizlik mi

o kahreden, o rüzgarlı, o soğuk sessizlik...

Telefonun hiç çalmaması mı yoksa bu yalnızlık?

Her çalan telefona sen diye koşmak

Aramaya kalktığımda ise

arayacak kimsemin olmaması mı

nasıl bir şey bu yalnızlık

buz gibi hem içini yakıp insanın

hem de dondurur mu bedeni

batar mı kalbe iğne gibi

Kaçılmaz mı yalnızlıktan yani ?

sen her zamanki gibi işe giderken

tutsam kollarından

gökyüzü gibi masmavi hayallerimi sunsam sana

hani baloncu gören çocuk gibi

gülse gözlerinin içi

yine duyar mıyız onun sesini

kokusu gelir mi gene burnumuza akşamları

hatırlar mıyım yüzünü ölürken

dokunsam tenine yakar mısın içimi

buz kesmiş duygularımı çözer misin

çözer misin aşk nedir bilmeyen dilsizin dilini

hadi bakalım korkular prensesi

göster hünerini... göster yüreğini...

Cengiz Güler

Paü-İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı

Lord Byron learned to love despair. I wish I could

Van Morrison talked to Ian Rankin about songwriting and Edna O'Brien read Madame George in a special event at London's Lyric Theatre

Van Morrison was celebrated in a night of words and music at London's Lyric Theatre, featuring Edna O'Brien (far right)

Irish poet Michael Longley promised a unique night, and "Van Morrison presents an evening of words & music" was certainly that, not least because we heard Edna O'Brien reading Madame George as a poem.

The event, at London's Lyric Theatre, was to mark a new book brought out by Faber, Lit Up Inside, which contains the lyrics to nearly 200 Morrison songs, presented as poems.

So was Van the Man lit up? At times, definitely, but there were also moments of vintage deadpan Morrison. The second half of the evening was a concert. He introduced Foreign Window by saying: "This was partly based on a documentary about Lord Byron in which he said 'I have learned to love despair'. I wish I could."

It was mainly chatty Van rather than grumpy Van treading the boards, though, and novelist Ian Rankin did a good job of drawing out anecdotes during a 25-minute question-and-answer session. We had listened to Dr Eamonn Hughes talking about Morrison and watched film footage of Morrison singing with Bob Dylan, and when Rankin asked him how many people have had Dylan as an accompanist, Morrison said: "Harry Belafonte, for one." Asked by Rankin about shows like the X Factor, and whether they were for people "selling their souls", Morrison replied: "Nothing has changed. I wish it had."

The thing about Morrison is that he adores music. Old jazz musicians who know him will tell you that he is passionate about the music of his youth – Morrison is 69 – and he was fulsome in his praise of blues musicians such as Sonny Boy Williamson, Leroy Carr and Lightnin' Hopkins. "It's difficult to understand how people supposed to be so uneducated, like Lightnin', were coming up with Elizabethan language and imagery in songs that were like poetry," Morrison said. He talked here with real fondness about the jazz and blues he had heard as a boy, both from his father's record collection and by listening to AFN radio. "Ray Charles, Sidney Bechet, Mahalia Jackson singing the Lord's Prayer. It was only years later I realised that wasn't normal. I heard Lenny Bruce doing a sketch about Stars of Jazz when he was an in-thing."

Longley, 75, told the audience that what he and Morrison talked about most was jazz: Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith – "where it began" – and the man known as Dr Jazz of Belfast, the late Solly Lipsitz, who ran the Atlantic Records shop on Belfast High Street.

If there was a point to the evening, and to the book, it seemed to be to place Morrison among the literary figures of Ireland. Morrison compared himself to William Blake (he had London, I had East Belfast seemed to be the gist) and used the term 'Blake-ian' three times. But it wasn't all portentous. Morrison has a funny side (he is a fan of Spike Milligan and The Goons and is good at impersonations) and this came across in a few replies to Rankin. After Morrison said that "I wrote poems before I ever picked up a guitar", Rankin asked if a young boy in Belfast would have had to hide his poetry writing for fear of being beaten up. "My first poem was about a shipyard and you wouldn't have been beaten up for that," Morrison joked. He was also witty when Rankin listed the writers Morrison had name-checked in a song (Beckett, Joyce and Wilde), with the singer saying: "Yes, and George Best and Alex Higgins, too."

But both Longley and O'Brien repeatedly described the songs they were reading as poems. O'Brien admitted that she has always been "a little stuck on him" and said she thought he was "in the business of making magic". The 83-year-old author of The Country Girls read his Astral Weeks song Madame George particularly well – and it would be easy to trip up over the lines:

'And the love that loves to love,
That loves the love that loves,
The love that loves to love,
The love that loves to love,
The love that loves.'

Morrison, dressed in his John Lee Hooker outfit (dark hat, dark suit, sunglasses), had already left the stage at that point to prepare for his concert.

^{Edna O'Brien said: "Like everyone, I was a little bit stuck on Van Morrison." REX}

^FEATURES

So what did we learn?

• That he connects with Samuel Beckett, especially in a love of repetition of words and an agreement about having to go on despite a "sense of despair and futility".

• That the song Moondance started as an instrumental, which he had been playing as far back as 1965, when he used to jam on saxophone in Notting Hill with Mick Fleetwood on conga drums. Have I Told You Lately (that I love you) also started as an instrumental.

• That Tore Down a la Rimbaud took eight years to finish – the longest it's ever taken him to complete a song.

• That part of his early song Mystic Eyes was inspired by the scene in Dickens's Great Expectations in which Pip meets Magwitch.

• That he was a big fan of Sixties English folk singer and guitarist Steve Benbow.

The concert, just under an hour, was enjoyable. This was gentle Van with a tight, acoustic, four-piece backing band (piano, double bass, drums, guitar) featuring brief, chatty explanations of the songs he played, including Alan Watt Blues, Wonderful Remark and Why Must I Always Explain. There was a jazzy version of Into the Mystic.

 ^{Van Morrison in 1965 REX FEATURES}

The highlight, showing Morrison at his PLAYFUL best, was a version of Coney Island. In the foreword to the book, Rankin says of Morrison's music: "There was a search for the spiritual in the commonplace . . . But there are also stories teeming with incidents and characters and grand travelogues, and extolling of life's simple pleasures."

That's true of the spoken song Coney Island, which Morrison said had a significance because as a boy, around 1959, he helped deliver bread in the van for Stewart's bakery in East Belfast and he would have to get up at 5am to make deliveries at the beach in Coney Island. Belfast, of that time, resonates in some of his best songs about Orangefield, which was still almost a village with cobbled streets when he was growing up.

 ^{Van Morrison inscribed a copy of Lit Up Inside to writer Ian Rankin, who wrote the foreword PHOTO COURTESY OF IAN RANKIN}

Although Coney Island had been read out earlier by Longley, Morrison played around with the composition, telling the affluent audience that "jam jar" was "Cockney rhyming slang for car" and, with a grin, changing the emotional end to the song, which is about a car journey across the glorious countryside of Northern Ireland, to include the joke:

'And all the time going to Coney Island I'm thinking,
Shall I drop you off at the next corner?'

For Morrison fans the book is interesting (although for the £500 deluxe version you might want your own Van the Man house concert), not least because you can finally learn some of the lines to songs such as Bulbs, in which I now know he sings about someone called Ada:

'Now Ada was a straight clear case of,
Havin' taken in too much juice.'

You also get a sense of the range of his writing and some of the bleakness in lesser known compositions such as Not Supposed to Break Down:

'Fifteen families starving,
All around the corner block.
Here we're standing so alone,
Just like Gibraltar Rock.'

But Longley was right. This was a unique event, right down to Morrison, no isolated rock for once, exiting stage left, whispering like a revivalist preacher, as he sang a line about crossing a river.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/11237541/Van-Morrison-Lord-Byron-learned-to-love-despair.-I-wish-I-could.html#

Varsa Şekliniz Türkiye'ye Bekleriz

Varsa Şekliniz Türkiye'ye Bekleriz

          Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, henüz 100. yılını doldurmamış bir ülke olmasına rağmen gelişmişlik konusunda önemli aşamalar kat etmiştir. Günümüzde Türkiye, Orta Doğu ve Balkanlar'da önemli bir coğrafi güç olarak dikkate çekmektedir ve G20 ülkelerinin de önemli unsurlarından birisidir. Fakat tüm bu olumlu gelişmelere rağmen, uzun yıllardır "gelişmekte olan ülke" kategorisinden sıyrılmayı başaramamıştır. Bana göre bunun iki önemli nedeni vardır: niteliğe değil niceliğe önem verme ve nedene değil şekle yoğunlaşma.

            Öncelikle, son 20 yılda ülkemizdeki üniversite sayısında önemli bir artış olduğu su götürmez bir gerçektir. Buna paralel olarak artan üniversite öğrenci kontenjanları genç nüfusa bir üniversitede okuma ve kendisi geliştirme imkanları sunmaktadır. 2002 yılında 76 olan üniversite sayısının günümüzde 168'den fazla olduğu düşünüldüğünde, ülkedeki gelişmişlik ve iş gücü oranında olumlu yönde bir artış gözlenmesi beklenmektedir. Öte yandan, yeterli altyapı ve üstyapı çalışmaları oluşturulmadan açılan üniversiteler, akademik anlamda ülkemizdeki kısırlığa "üniversite-bilimsel" makale oranı baz alındığında kötü yansıdığı gibi, yetiştirilen öğrencilerin kalitesini de düşürmüştür. Örneğin, üniversitelerin edebiyat fakültelerinde sınıf mevcutlarını 50-80 kişi arasında tutmak ve zemine sabitlenmiş sıralarla bu öğrencilerden fikirlerini sınıf ortamında tartışmayı beklemek veya hocadan sınıftaki her öğrenciye eşit ilgi göstermesini beklemek ve performans ödevleri ile öğrenciyi okul dışında dahi sosyal bilimler sınırları içerisinde tutmasını beklemek hayalcilik değil de nedir? Buna ek olarak, artan öğrenci sayısına uygun olarak planlanmayan özel sektör ve kamu çalışma alanları ise maalesef üniversite öğrencilerini gerektiği gibi istihdam edememe sorununu beraberinde getirmektedir. Yalnızca üniversite sayısını ve öğrenci kontenjanını arttırarak ülkeden daha iyi yazar, eleştirmen, mühendis, iktisatçı çıkmasını beklemek, yani niteliğe önem vermeden niceliğe bağımlı olmak Türkiye'yi bir otuz yıl daha gelişmekte olan ülke olmaktan bir adım öteye götüremez.

            Gelelim güzel ülkemizin bana göre ikinci en büyük sorununa: şekilcilik. Türkiye birden plansız olarak geliştiği için, Batıyı örnek alarak yaptığı uygulamaların çoğu toplum tarafından tam manasıyla kavranamamış ve sadece şekilde kalmıştır. Bunun en akla gelen örneği Türk Eğitim Sistemi'dir. Ülkemizdeki eğitim sisteminin Batıyı özellikle ABD'yi örnek aldığı bilinmektedir. Eğitim bilimlerinde kullanılan bir çok teknik Batılı yazarlar tarafından kendi ülkelerindeki gereksinim ve uygulamalar gözlenerek üretilmiştir. Ülkemiz de muasır medeniyetler seviyesini yakalamak adına bu yöntem ve teknikleri uygulamaya çalışmaktadır. Fakat, kopyala ve uygula mantığı güdülerek alınan bu bilimsel çalışmalar, ülkemiz koşulları dikkate alınmadığı için sadece teoride kalmakta ve öğretmenler tarafından pratiğe dökülememektedir. Bizdeki sınıf mevcutlarının yer yer 30'ları bulması ve toplumun sosyo-kültürel yapısı düşünüldüğünde zaten aksi de mümkün değildir. Örneğin, yabancı dil öğrenmedeki başarısızlık ülkemizin henüz çözüme ulaşmayan sorunlarından birisidir. Şeklen bakıldığında Türkiye'deki öğrenci de aynı Batılı bir ülkenin öğrencisi gibi kağıt üzerinde "communicative method" kullanılarak öğrenci merkezli, konuşma, dinleme ve yazma becerilerine eşit ağırlık verilen ve dilbilgisi üzerinde aşırı zaman kaybının olmadığı bir eğitim programında eğitim görmelidir. Fakat merkezi bir eğitim sistemi ile üniversitenin kazanıldığı ve bu sistemde sayısal, eşit ağırlık ve sözel alanlarında yabancı dile yer olmadığı bir yerde İngilizce öğretmeninin dersin önemini aileye ve öğrencilere kavratmadaki başarısı çok sınırlıdır. Buna ek olarak, yüksek sayıdaki öğrenci sayısı ile sınıf yönetimini sağlamak bile başlı başlına büyük bir işken, öğretmenden her çocuk ile konuşma pratiği yapması veya sınıfta sessiz bir ortamda dinleme çalışması yapmasını beklemek akıl karı bir iş midir? Bunun sonucunda ülkemizdeki yabancı dil öğretimi Batıyı taklit eden "şekilci" bir sistem olmaktan öteye gidememektedir.

            Sonuç olarak, Türkiye'de gelişmiş bir ülke için yapılması gereken en önemli şeylerin başında ülkemiz sorunlarına uygun ve aceleci olmayan, gerçekçi bir plan yapılmalıdır. Bu plan 5 yıl ile sınırlı kalmamalıdır ve keyfi değiştirilmemelidir. Planı yaparken atılacak adımların sayısına değil kalitesine önem verilmeli ve de bunların uygulanabilirliği yani şekilde ( teoride ) kalmaması dikkate alınması gereken başlıca etmenlerden olmalıdır.

Cengiz Güler

PAU İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı

Milton versus Shakespeare

Could it be that we picked the inferior writer as our national poet?

Who'd win in a fight? John Milton and William Shakespeare

December 9, 2008, is a date that publishers, literary scholars and probably a few others have been looking forward to: it's Milton's birthday. On this day in 1608 he was born in the City of London. Four hundred years later, he is born again in exhibitions, conferences, biographies, the latest scholarly edition of his complete works, and evena live, day-long reading of Paradise Lost, courtesy of the English faculty at Cambridge University.

No Milton in Love, though. No Royal Milton Company. No literary pilgrims traipsing up to Bread Street, where he grew up, to lay wreaths or get some spurious kick of heritage. No Hollywood high-school comedy based on "Comus". (There is the promise of this, however, reasonably categorised by IMDB as drama, fantasy and "horror".) 

In other words, in what an academic might call his "cultural afterlife", Milton has had little to do with the kind of excesses that have made Shakespeare into a heritage industry. This is down in part, maybe, to the biographical facts – Shakespeare was in showbusiness, and Milton was in the Latin Office of the Cromwellian Protectorate – and to the nature of the "high Christian seriousness" on which the latter's reputation has depended. And thanks to which it has now, perhaps, declined.

Whether in art, life or afterlife, the temptation to compare Milton with Shakespeare has been a persistent one. Seriousness, tainted by cultural guilt, partly explains this. Mere drama (you know: Hamlet, King Lear...) is usually thought to occupy a lower place in the aesthetic pecking order than epic. Milton the pamphleteer, the advocate of a free press, the republican, provides a canonical counterweight to Shakespeare, the spokesman for everything and nothing, whose personal views hide behind his dramatis personae. "Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties", Milton argued in Areopagitica. "How now? A rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead!", wrote Shakespeare in Hamlet, after crossing out "brown cow". No wonder it was Milton whom Wordsworth felt "shouldst" be living in 1802, to see England turned into "a fen / Of stagnant waters".

If that's the sort of invidious comparison that appeals to you, you might wish to ask yourself, along with the Princeton professor Nigel Smith: is Milton better than Shakespeare? Here's how Smith celebates the undiminished currency of Milton's political writings and the "contradictory energy" of his verses:

"However much we celebrate Shakespeare's grasp of humanity or poetry, his troubling displays of power, and his wonderful and delightful exposure of sexual identity, however much great acting companies, actors, and actresses produce staggering performances of his plays, Milton's interrogations of free will, liberty, and the threat to it are more riveting. No student of Milton has left Paradise Lost without feeling such an admiration, indeed an ardour of admiration."

The rest of Smith's introduction can be read here; but so much for seriousness. There are still things for most of us to find out about the birthday boy. For example: the new Oxford biography of the younger man points out how near Bread Street was to a certain theatre, the Blackfriars indoor playhouse, where some of Shakespeare's plays received their first performances. Milton's father became involved in the theatre's business at one point. The City of London was a small place, of course, and ... could there be a personal as well as poetic significance to the fact that one of Milton's earliest poems was a tribute to "my Shakespear"?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2008/dec/09/milton-shakespeare-anniversary